The Conversion Code

What Is The Conversion Code? The Conversion Code is the new formula for being a great marketer and salesperson in the Internet era. It's a proven step-by-step blueprint to increasing leads and sales, immediately. Today's customers are savvy, and they have more options than ever before. Capturing their attention and turning it into revenue requires a whole new approach. (Location 333)

The Conversion Code Marketer's Creed Leads are people too Image is everything Facebook is the Internet Analytics are overrated Every word counts The Conversion Code Scheduler's Creed Every second matters Zero cold calls Human companies win The fortune is in the follow-up Every word counts The Conversion Code Closer's Creed Yes is not an accident Conversations create clients Dig deep or go to sleep You're in charge Every word counts (Location 437)

Content Is Not King if Your Goal Is Capturing and Converting Leads—Design, Being Purposeful and Landing Pages Are King (Location 468)

Great design builds trust and trust is and always has been why people buy things, online and off. As Zig Ziglar once said, “If people like you, they'll listen to you. But if they trust you, they'll do business with you.” (Location 471)

Participants discussed their first impressions of a website. There were two factors that led them to reject or mistrust a website quickly. The overwhelming majority of comments related to the design of the website. Ninety-four percent cited design and only 6 percent cited content (Location 491)

If you are going to capture and convert quality Internet leads, you need to gain their trust. Start with their list of critiques and look at your current website to see what you are “guilty” of. (Location 506)

Here's a combination of design principles that showed up on lists from the aforementioned Baby Boomers, Brainiacs, and Bureaucrats. (Location 514)

One Column Having a one-column layout allows for a “one page, one purpose” approach. Two- and three-column website designs can feel cluttered, complex, and busy. (Location 517)

Social Proof “They are great” is the new “We are great.” When you display the feedback of your happiest customers, and not just your own marketing messages, you will find that the quantity and quality of your leads from your website will increase. (Location 522)

More Contrast The fewer colors you use, the more the colors you do use will “pop.” Whitespace is highly underrated. A well-designed website should get people to the parts of it that make you money, fast. Increase your contrast by taking a “less is more” approach: Use colors only when critical—like in your calls to action. (Location 531)

Fewer Form Fields We have only eight seconds to capture someone's attention online, so you cannot ask for a ton of information on your website contact forms. Stick to the basics of name, phone number, and email when possible. You can also use a “log in with Facebook or Google” button above or below the form fields so they can complete the form without any keystrokes at all. I have also found it to be VERY helpful to have a backup option like “Or you can call/text 555-5555 or email Hello@Curaytor.com” anytime you have a contact form. The bottom line is that if someone is willing to fill out a form on your website to be contacted they might also prefer to simply contact you right then. If it takes someone more than a moment or two to locate your phone number and your email address on your website, fix that ASAP. (Location 535)

Keeping Focus More choices = fewer decisions made. You really want to limit the number of calls to action on any given page to one, when you can. If one page of your website asks me to join your newsletter, follow you on Twitter, and download your e-book, I probably won't do any of them. Remember, one page = one purpose. The only page of your site that will likely need multiple CTAs (calls to action) is your homepage. For all other pages, keep them laser focused on one primary goal. (Location 544)

Turn a Website into a Lead-Generating Machine (Location 587)

Here are some proven ways to capture leads on your website, without being (too) annoying. (Location 600)

SumoMe is a great option if you want to plug and play most of these features into your existing website, all at once. I especially like SumoMe's Welcome Mat, List Builder, and Scroll Box add ons. Thankfully, SumoMe, Kissmetrics, and Intercom all make adding these features as simple as installing a line or two of code into your site. (Location 608)

One of the best features of real-time, live chat in the modern era that few companies are taking advantage of is contextual messages and triggers. If someone visits a specific page of your site, or if they visit a certain number of pages or spend enough total time on your site, these tools can trigger a message that is uber-specific. As an example, if someone is on the Testimonials page of your website, the live chat pop-up or alert badge can read, “Thanks for reading our reviews, Chris. I always read reviews before I buy things too. If you have any questions let me know!” (Location 611)

I have found that live chat leads are some of the best leads. If you have not been getting them until now, enjoy. If you have had live chat installed, but were not using it the right way, you will find that using these best practices will consistently get you quality appointments for your sales team. (Location 643)

The reason landing pages are so effective for online lead generation is simple: They have only ONE purpose. Compare that to your website or blog, which may have dozens of navigation options or categories to choose from, and you can see why professional marketers use landing pages when money is on the line and ROI is a must. (Location 649)

Unlike website traffic that Google can bring you through SEO and SEM, where the “preview” of the ad or link is very text-based, social media and email marketing allow you to be very visual and descriptive about what you sell BEFORE the user clicks, which can drastically increase the conversion rate of the landing page you send them to. (Location 663)

More likely, you need to start over and build new, optimized landing pages that capture the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of leads day in and day out. Here's how. (Location 668)

Keep in mind that even if you have no design or technical skill whatsoever, there are some very cool companies like LeadPages, Instapage, or Unbounce that let you build inexpensive (or free) landing pages in just a few easy clicks. (Location 671)

Because our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than they do text, a critical component of cracking The Conversion Code is to understand that design, not words, builds trust online. Words matter, sure. In fact, copywriting should be an obsession for every business that wants to be successful using the Internet. (Location 684)

“Successful landing pages grab attention quickly by matching the promotional copy in the email's call-to-action that yielded the click. Yet 45 percent of the landing pages evaluated failed to repeat the email's promotional copy in the headline.” (Location 697)

“Asking too many questions can lead prospective customers to become wary and frustrated enough that they abandon the process. Nevertheless, 45 percent of landing pages that included forms required more than 10 fields to be completed.” (Location 703)

Here are the nine key elements Kissmetrics identified that make a perfect landing page (with my take on each): (Location 712)

If you want to spend a few hours learning more about how small changes in website design, landing pages, calls to action, buttons, images, and copywriting can impact lead conversion rates, I highly recommend that you check out WhichTestWon.com. They have hundreds of A/B tests you can learn from. You even get to, as the name implies, guess which variant won. You will be surprised at how often which test you think won actually lost! (Location 766)

Retargeting online is very similar. Every visitor who does not become a lead can begin to immediately see your ads on Facebook, across the web, and in mobile apps. This can really turn your website into a relationship in a world where most websites have a one-night stand with their visitors. If they don't close them on the first try, they never call back. HUGE mistake. (Location 775)

A Marketing Sherpa reader study revealed landing page conversion averages were between 5 and 11 percent when linking to a landing page for a free or paid offer via an email.6 The conversion rate from Facebook and Google ads can be even lower. This is why following those who do not convert with more chances is a must. They showed intent by visiting your “store”—they just didn't complete a form or contact you. Retargeting allows you to move your ads in front of them in real time as they continue to “shop” online. If (Location 780)

We currently use the native Facebook tracking pixel for newsfeed, web, and mobile retargeting ads, and we have also used AdRoll for retargeting across the web. In Section Two, I go deeper on using retargeting as a lead follow-up and appointment-setting tool. (Location 790)

Hire someone else to do it! We hired a professional journalist (Paul Hagey) at Curaytor and the ROI has been tremendous. Often, bloggers, journalists, and writers are greatly undervalued and underpaid. (Location 833)

“The Anatomy of a Perfect Blog Post.”3 Here are the ones that I felt mattered the most from Buffer's great list. (Location 841)

If you have been wondering how you can turn a blog into a business driver, lead magnets are part of the answer. With an assist from Digital Marketer,1 here are nine examples of lead magnets (and my thoughts on each) that can be applied to any landing page for any business model: (Location 993)

6. Discount: “Want to save money? Create an account now and get a 20 percent discount!” (Location 1019)

Once you have these lead magnets established for your business, there are two last steps to making sure they get used as often as possible. First, you have to bake your lead magnets into your website's design. Your menu, header, footer, and pop-up messages can all include links to these magnets/landing pages. Second, you should make sure that all of your blog posts have lead magnets inside of them. I actually find that simply adding one or two lead magnets (don't go overboard) into the text of what I write is a great strategy and gets leads coming in consistently. As an example, if I published a blog post titled “3 Quick Facebook Tips You Can Use Today,” I would include a lead magnet like “You can also download our entire Facebook Marketing Cheat Sheet” to close out the blog post. You want every article that you publish and promote to have these “trapdoors”/links in the text. This is why having a dozen or more lead magnets is important. That way you can include a relevant one every single time you publish new content. (Location 1043)

Here they are, with my take on why each is so important: (Location 1066)

Targeting specific groups or users: There are a ton of Facebook Groups, blogs and Twitter accounts that are large, active, and built around a singular topic, like being a mom. (Location 1080)

Optimizing Your Content for Google You want to create content in a way that Google sees it and then positions it as highly as possible. Honestly, just following the “perfect” blog post directions from the last chapter is half the SEO battle. (Location 1104)

SEO is passive lead generation. It is demand fulfillment. And it is way more competitive and expensive than Facebook right now. (Location 1110)

Demand generation, direct response marketing, and social media advertising are the future of lead generation, not SEO. (Location 1113)

As an example, if I published a blog post entitled “Best iPad Apps for Real Estate Agents” and then I promoted the article on my Facebook page and to my email list, I quickly found myself ranking for Google searches with the same keywords. Imagine that. (Location 1118)

When it comes to optimizing your content for search, don't overthink it. I provide a great checklist ahead that you can use as a framework, but to break it down to the very basics, the “secret sauce” is simply to crank out great content, call it what it is, optimize it, promote it through email and social, then maybe make some final tweaks, and move on. (Location 1121)

Quick Sprout recently published “The Ultimate SEO Checklist: 25 Questions to Ask Yourself before Your Next Post.” (Location 1128)

The best Facebook marketers are the ones who are willing to share genuine moments of their lives, the good and the bad. When it comes to Facebook profiles, lurkers lose. Consistency matters. You need to be either semi-interesting daily or really interesting weekly, at a minimum. You can't expect to hop onto Facebook once a month and share what is happening in your life and get any traction or business from it. (Location 1212)

I actually mail them a handwritten note (I love using Bond.co for these). I always include my cell phone and email address below my signature. (Location 1281)

When you use social media to ask why, it can take deep thought. More thought than most people will give in our microwave-mentality, :08 attention span world. When you ask when, or who, or how many, it takes a lot less brainpower to respond. Best of all, when you ask simple, easy-to-answer questions, you're going to learn interesting things about your network. (Location 1290)

Here is the #1 reason you 100 percent must have a Facebook page to crack The Conversion Code: You cannot run Facebook ads without a Facebook page. And what you will learn ahead about setting up a Facebook ad funnel is not an optional part of the code. (Location 1395)

Pimp your page out—make it look amazing. Your profile pic that you choose for your page will be in the ads you run, so choose wisely. Your cover pic should be spectacular and updated regularly. Your bio and information tabs should be filled out thoroughly. Think of your Facebook page as your backup website. Obsess about every detail during the setup and optimization phases. Most of the best practices for posting I mentioned earlier regarding your profile also apply to pages. But your “fans” and your “friends” will likely have different tastes. (Location 1398)

I use Insights for two primary reasons. First, I use the Pages to Watch feature to spy on my competition as well as other pages I admire that are nicely run to see how we are comparing to them. (Location 1407)

The second way I use Insights is to find out which of my posts work the best. (Location 1413)

If the only thing that you do after reading this book is build a Facebook ad funnel for your business, it alone can produce enough leads to keep nearly any sales team busy and will increase your sales. Remember, Facebook is the New Internet. Don't go into Facebook ads looking to supplement what you are doing online. Go into it with the mind-set that it can become your #1 channel for traffic, leads, and sales. Anything less is a user error. I am giving you the exact blueprint. (Location 1439)

Google is in the business of demand fulfillment. Their user showed intent by keying in a certain phrase, and Google can display your ad at this very critical moment. (Location 1449)

Demand Generation Is Greater Than Demand Fulfillment For the first time, a website besides Google has so much scale, time on site, and engagement that you can have your ad in front of your dream customer BEFORE they ever even perform a Google search. (Location 1453)

Clever copywriting and optimized landing pages matter with Facebook ads, too, but the biggest difference is how much more image-centric Facebook ads are than Google. (Location 1462)

Start every Facebook ad with a killer image, and then work backwards. When you create a Facebook ad, try creating it with the mentality that the image in the ad is the entire ad. I have found that images or custom-designed ad pieces with white/negative space and bright colors mixed in perform great. In fact, the brighter the colors or image, the better the results. Dark, dull images get terrible click-through rates compared to bright, bold images. (Location 1481)

When I say, “Image is everything,” there's another image that everyone forgets about: Your Facebook page profile picture is in nearly every ad you will run. Make sure it looks great in the newsfeed. Sometimes you can't just cram your existing logo into your profile picture. You need an “icon” version of your logo, like what your company's mobile app icon would look like. We reduce Curaytor to just the C on all of our social media profiles. (Location 1486)

At Curaytor, our services are not inexpensive. But most people who hear about what we do want to buy it. So instead of plastering our pricing to keep anyone who can't afford us away (which is a terrible idea at our price point, to give your price before you give your value), we use copy like “Exclusively for top-producing salespeople and teams.” This both attracts the right leads and repels the wrong ones, all without pissing anyone off. (Location 1515)

If you don't have a strong CTA in your ads, you are wasting your money and asking the people taking the time to read them to do nothing. (Location 1524)

If you want an endless supply of clicks, leads, and sales from Facebook, you will need to make sure that your ads are being displayed on and optimized for mobile, not just desktop. (Location 1533)

There are certain Facebook ad campaigns where I actually remove all mobile ads and target only desktop users, especially when I am driving them to a more in-depth capture form or landing page. (Location 1538)

When I build landing pages I know will be used on mobile, I just focus on getting email and/or phone only. (Location 1540)

use “light registration” when possible on mobile ad campaigns and landing pages. (Location 1543)

At Curaytor, our sales page does a great job at converting qualified leads. That means my job as a marketer is to get people there regularly, and there is more than one way to skin that cat. (Location 1554)

In a perfect world, each ad would get a new landing page, but that's not always necessary. Instead of always building new landing pages, spend as much time or more coming up with new and creative Facebook ads to get people to them. (Location 1557)

The Perfect Facebook Ad Funnel The Conversion Code is built on my C3 formula of Capturing leads, Creating… (Location 1562)

used. In the case of Facebook ads, though, C3 stands for Content marketing, Conversion marketing, and Closing marketing. Once you identify what you'll be linking to and which of the three buckets each ad falls into,… (Location 1564)

Top Layer—Content Marketing The Facebook ads that will get the most clicks and engagement will be your content marketing ads. These should link to quality blog posts, videos, or podcasts—anything that entices a ton of clicks and that someone can access without registering. Our goal with these ads is not necessarily to capture leads. Instead we are trying to get anyone with a pulse that might buy from us eventually to visit our site so we can start to build trust and gain brand recognition with them by providing value.… (Location 1569)

Second Layer—Conversion Marketing If your business doesn't have enough leads right now (or at least a steady flow of leads each day), you can skip layer one and start with layer two. Your conversion marketing ads will be where you get the highest volume of leads coming in. These ads should link to your lead magnets and landing pages. This layer is where things like offering a guide, e-book, or video to download can work nicely. All of your Facebook conversion marketing ads should link to an offer/capture page. Bottom Layer—Closing Marketing Remember, this is a Facebook ad funnel and all of the ads work cohesively. Closing marketing Facebook ads simply account for people moving through the funnel. Closing marketing… (Location 1576)

The goal and progression of the C3 Facebook ad funnel are simple. Step 1: Use content marketing to create traffic, awareness, and tracking pixels that trigger more ads. Step 2: Use conversion marketing to better identify who will put their toe in the water by registering and… (Location 1586)

The Three Core Facebook Ad Audiences You need to create strategic, custom audiences to… (Location 1593)

1. The Magic Million This one is simple. Who has a pulse and might buy from you or refer you someone who might buy? Although you may not end up with exactly a million people in this audience, I call it that so… (Location 1597)

A few simple Magic Million audience examples might be a handful of the zip codes you work in. Or to target by several large employers (… (Location 1601)

I also find that targeting your Magic Million by using Facebook's Interest option can be impactful. As an example, I have an ad audience saved so that I can target people who are interested in Inman News and… (Location 1604)

Remember, Facebook gives you a tracking pixel that you can install in less than one minute on your website. When somebody from your Magic Million visits a content marketing article (even though you may not require them to register), the next few times they log into Facebook, they will start seeing your conversion marketing ad that does drive them to a capture page. The idea is that you want to build awareness and trust with your Magic Million… (Location 1608)

2. The Chunky Middle Anyone from the Magic Million who clicks on a content marketing ad gets automatically added to what I call the Chunky Middle. This happens dynamically thanks to our Facebook tracking pixel being installed on our website. But a Chunky Middle audience also needs to include anyone who Likes your page, your entire email list, and your “dream” audience. You want to target this audience with both your content and conversion-centric ads. As opposed to the higher-level targeting we used to create the Magic Million, the “dream” targeting here might be somebody 35 to 40, who has owned their home for more than six years, and who loves yoga. Unlike the intended… (Location 1614)

Let's say you start off by uploading 5,000 people to your custom audience, but that you are getting a few hundred new leads a month as well. You can sync your CRM to Facebook using a tool like Driftrock so that as your database of leads grows, so does the Chunky Middle (and the Sweet Spot, below). Mailchimp and many other CRM/email marketing tools are also starting to make real-time Facebook Custom Audience syncing a frictionless process to set up. (Location 1626)

3. The Sweet Spot This is your audience that has already become a lead in your database and is most likely to buy now. This audience should see all your C3 ads: content, conversion, and closing. Because they are already in your database as a lead and have thus shown intent in your product or service, you want to (and can appropriately) show them ads at the bottom of the funnel featuring customer reviews, scheduling a time to speak with sales, calling now to learn more, getting a discount by acting now, or signing up for your next group sales webinar. Creating this audience is as (Location 1634)

For example: One of my closing ads that performed well when targeting my sweet spot was “We're not stalking you, we just want to talk.” It linked to a tool I use called ScheduleOnce (also known as MeetMe.so), which lets people book their preferred date and time for a one-on-one sales demo (while syncing with most online calendar programs, ensuring it doesn't conflict with my existing schedule). An ad this focused on closing might be a HUGE waste of money if I targeted it at the Magic Million or Chunky Middle, but because I am targeting only the leads in my database who have already shown intent in buying, it works. Most people think that once they've got a lead, they don't have to market to them other than by email, SMS, or calling to follow up. That's so wrong. Your Sweet Spot audience should be seeing ads that keep them engaged with you until they buy. Remember, emails typically get opened by considerably less than half of the people who get them. Using this follow-up advertising technique, you can pay to get your closing campaigns in front of nearly 100 percent of your leads anytime you want! (Location 1642)

To review, here is a quick look at how the C3 of Facebook ads and the three audiences you want to target are interrelated: Content marketing ads target the Magic Million, Chunky Middle, and Sweet Spot Conversion marketing ads target the Chunky Middle and Sweet Spot Closing marketing ads target the Sweet Spot (Location 1652)

Another pro tip: Day parting provides an additional level of customization you can use for maximum lead conversions. Through day parting you can set your Facebook ads up to be displayed only at certain hours of the day and/or on certain days of the week. I've used this and it's very effective, especially if you want your ads to run while you have a salesperson on the clock who can follow up instantly. Also, knowing what time of day your ad will run allows you to get VERY clever with your copy and relevancy. Imagine an ad that runs on Friday and Saturday night only between the hours of 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. that starts with “Do you have trouble sleeping on the weekends?” or an ad that offers an amazing deal, but only on Tuesday afternoons. When you combine the three Cs with the three audiences and then add day parting, you can really set yourself up for better lead generation and better lead conversion. (Location 1661)

Pro tip: Remember that the longer you try to run an ad, the less likely it's going to stay relevant. Things change. So keep an eye on what Facebook calls frequency (how many times the average person has seen your ad so far). If you see that an ad has been seen dozens of times by the same audience and is losing steam, change it. (Location 1698)

Four Facebook Ad Types Everyone Should Run Once you nail the content for your ads and determine your custom audiences, you will then need to determine what type of ad to run. (Location 1704)

Ad Type 1: Boosted Post This is by far the easiest ad to set up. Post something to your page and then boost it for a day. If it does really well, you can always reboost it or even open it in Ads Manager and fine-tune it later. Boosted posts allow you to closely control your budget with short spurts of exposure. (Location 1709)

Pro tip: Try uploading a photo album of pictures to your page with a link in the post to a landing page, and then boost that. When you upload an album, it actually creates a beautifully designed entry in the newsfeed when compared to everything else that has only one picture. (Location 1714)

Ad Type 2: Click-to-Website This one is pretty straightforward. You could think of it as your Facebook ad fastball down the middle. The purpose of this ad is simply to get as many clicks as possible, all going to one place. Ad Type 3: Multiproduct/Carousel Ad If you want to drive people to multiple parts of your site or multiple landing pages, you can use a multiproduct or “carousel” ad. This is one ad that simultaneously pushes people to multiple places using tiles that are swipe-able. (Location 1721)

Ad Type 4: Lead Ads Facebook has never shown a more obvious commitment to helping business owners get leads as they have with their new Lead Ads option. Lead Ads do not require you to link to a landing page or website to collect someone's information. They don't even require the visitor to fill anything out, as Facebook already (in most cases) has their email and phone number on file. Instead, when someone clicks on a Lead Ad, it instantly (and by instantly I mean MUCH faster than a normal landing page would load) pulls up a simple form that is pre-filled with their information so they can simply click Submit. (Location 1735)

If you are looking to get a huge list of emails and/or phone numbers that you can add to your database, Facebook Lead Ads are an excellent choice. (Location 1743)

Facebook Power Editor Power Editor is Facebook's more advanced interface for creating and maintaining ads. Power Editor allows you to do more advanced, agency-centric tasks (like tagging your ads for organization). If you want to mass edit an ad campaign, it's helpful. If you need a dashboard to see all the different campaigns you're running, it's helpful. You can even use Power Editor to mass upload ad campaigns via a CSV file to save time. (Location 1745)

Everything I have covered in this chapter so far (except Lead Ads) can be done without Power Editor. (Location 1750)

Pro tip: If you want to learn more about Power Editor and all of its advanced capabilities, I highly recommend checking out Jon Loomer's blog. He's become an authority on Power Editor and regularly provides detailed blog posts about changes, helpful tips for Power Editor users, and great advice about Facebook ads in general. (Location 1753)

The best strategy is to go deep on a couple of repeatable tactics that work for you as opposed to going wide and throwing a ton of things against the wall to see if they stick. (Location 1775)

For me, video has been huge for making sales, and I enjoy it. One big advantage that I've experienced using videos as my primary lead magnets and in most of the marketing I do is that my leads can get to truly know me and my company better than they could through written text alone. Remember, words are only 7 percent of how humans communicate. When someone reads an article or blog post, they apply their expected tone and physiology to it as they read it, not yours (unless they happen to know you). On camera, all 100 percent of the ways we understand each other are in play. (Location 1787)

This is exactly why my Curaytor cofounder Jimmy Mackin and I host a live web show (#WaterCooler) and produce countless webinars, plus put the audio-only version of everything we do on iTunes and Stitcher, all for free. It's because there's a big difference between people hearing about you and hearing from you. Video allows for zero ambiguity in my message. (Location 1792)

I have personally found the following tactics to have a solid return on the time and money I spend investing in them. (Location 1802)

There really is no better way to get big traffic that consists of the people most likely to buy from you, on demand and for nearly no cost by the way, on your website than from a well-composed mass email. (Location 1806)

Did you know that you can actually see your email marketing traffic in Google Analytics? If you use Google's easy-to-use URL Builder to track your links before you send your next campaign, you can better understand the impact your emails are actually having. (Location 1817)

With the proper tracking pixels installed, you can “follow up” with these prospective leads without ever capturing their email address or phone number. (Location 1829)

Think of it this way: No matter what you do, most of your traffic will not opt in. But the fact that they even visited your site in the first place is a great indicator that they are serious about needing what you sell. Using AdRoll or the Facebook tracking pixel, once someone visits one of your pages, they will see more and different ads “following” them around. (Location 1832)

Retargeter provides seven best practices for running retargeting campaigns:2 1. Don't overbear or underbear: Just because someone visits your website does not mean that you should overwhelm them with ads. You also don't want to show them too few ads. Retargeter “found that setting a frequency cap of 15 to 20 impressions to each of your users every month is the most elegant way to keep your brand top of mind.” 2. Make sure your ads are well branded: The reality is that most banner ads don't get clicked on. So retargeting needs to do more for you than get clicks and leads; it needs to build your brand and get your customers telling you that “we saw you everywhere online.” You want your ads to look great and have a strong CTA, but you can also brand them! 3. Understand your view-through window: Not all leads will click on your ad; some will actually see your ad and then type your URL into a new tab or window. So when that happens it should also be considered a conversion. Most retargeting software will give you this data. 4. Have an incredible network: Retargeting does not work very well if your audience size is tiny. Remember, these ads are conditioned upon people visiting your website or landing pages to trigger. If necessary, you can supplement your retargeting efforts by using the Google Display Network so you can reach all of your possible customers as they search the web, not just the ones you tagged who visited your site. 5. Optimize your conversion funnel: Your ads won't matter if where you send the clicks doesn't convert. Make sure you use all of the landing page design tips I covered in Chapter 1 when you deploy a retargeting ad. 6. Target an actionable audience: When you choose who to retarget, you do not have to choose 100 percent of your visitors. You can actually retarget based on the specific page they visited. Imagine retargeting only the people who had visited your reviews page—and retargeting them with more reviews. Or what about showing the people who got all the way to your contact page and then bailed some additional Contact Us CTAs? By getting micro with your retargeting, you can really have a macro impact on your conversions. 7. Segment your active audience: Not only can you retarget by audience, but also you can “burn” an audience when you retarget. This can be useful if someone actually buys and you don't want them to see more ads. By placing a burn pixel in your Thank You or Order Confirmation page, the ads will turn off automatically. You can also launch additional campaigns for this burned audience in the future. This can create solid upsell and retention opportunities when used properly. (Location 1840)

But did you know that you can also use curated content to drive traffic and leads back to your site? Snip.ly makes it very easy to “attach a call-to-action to every link you share.” Even though you are sharing content from someone else's site, you can drive traffic back to yours using cleverly designed buttons and banners. Snip.ly is like a Hello Bar or Kissmetrics Engage tool, but instead of it being on your website, you can add it to any site! (Location 1869)

Another great platform for curating (and benefiting from) other people's content is Genius.com (Location 1881)

Imagine reading a well-written summary of your industry's current trends and being able to highlight and add your two cents before you share it. (Location 1884)

Here is a quick hack you can do today to start making YouTube a referring source of traffic and leads for your business: Go into your YouTube analytics and sort your videos by the most viewed. Be sure to note the average length of a view on these particular videos. Next, you are going to add what YouTube calls a “card” to the videos at a time interval that is about 25 percent of the average view length. So if I knew the average view of a video was four minutes, I would add the card at approximately the one-minute mark. The idea here is that if you show them the YouTube card (which is really just a nice way to say pop-up ad with a link to anywhere you want) too soon, they won't click it. And if you wait too long, they may never see it. There is no exact science here. Just be sure that at a minimum you are showing the card within the average length of that video's view. Use the cards to link to your lead magnets that are most related to that video's content. So if I had a YouTube video about Facebook ads as an example, I would use a card that linked to a landing page where they could also download “27 Proven Facebook Ad Templates You Can Use Today.” (Location 1892)

You can also use a more professional marketing video tool like Wistia, which allows for email capture built right into the video and can redirect to any URL you want when a video ends. (Location 1905)

YouTube ads are another largely untapped channel for generating significant traffic and leads. You can create YouTube ads and target them based on location, gender, age, video topic, and/or keywords. Just like with their cards, YouTube ads can link to a landing page with a lead magnet and capture form. You can link to other videos you have made in the ad, but I usually link to a landing page. There are TrueView, In Stream, and In Display ad options to choose from. (Location 1909)

There is a phenomenon in Silicon Valley around startups making “explainer videos.” These are usually under 90 seconds and feature a combination of animation, screenshots, and voice-over. GoAnimate actually makes creating one yourself almost as easy as using PowerPoint. The metric you want to focus on here is retention rate of the video. If you have a budget, and you are going to heavily invest in YouTube as an ad platform, you can hire a plethora of companies that make these explainer videos for you. Just Google “explainer video companies” and be sure to watch a few of their demos before reaching out. I have found that each company has their own style that you can gather from their website examples before reaching out for a quote. Pricing for these can be $500 to $10,000 or more, depending on the scope and quality of the work. (Location 1919)

However, I find the only way to truly make Twitter an enjoyable experience for me is to use Twitter lists. (Location 1939)

In order for me to see a tweet, I have to also add the account manually to a private Twitter list I built entitled “Gurus” (and believe me, I bet most of the people on that list do the exact same thing—this is a best practice employed by many other power Twitter users). I have spent countless hours adding the smartest people and companies in marketing, sales, and technology to my Twitter list. This saves me hours each week, because now all the best content is being filtered and brought to me. I no longer have to seek—I find. I also add accounts to my list that I want to watch, but not follow. Let's say you want to keep an eye on what a competitor is sharing, without giving them the satisfaction that you “followed” them. Simple. Add them to your list—don't follow them. It is actually easy to make your Twitter lists private so that only you can see who is on them. (Location 1942)

Here is the nice thing about retargeting and having our Facebook tracking or AdRoll pixel installed on our website and all landing pages: The click is enough. I can drive thousands of clicks from Twitter to an article and couldn't care less about how many I capture while they are there because I know that just based on their visit, a Facebook newsfeed ad and a web retargeting campaign will be triggered. I am especially bullish on Facebook newsfeed retargeted ads. You can set up a retargeting campaign for someone who visits your blog so that the next time they log into Facebook, they could see an ad in their feed that says, “Thanks for checking out my blog. Here is a free download of X that you will probably enjoy, too.” So you'll have cultivated the lead on Twitter and sent them to your site, and their site visit triggers an ad in their Facebook newsfeed and across the web as they browse that links to a landing page. Boom! (Location 1976)

Purposefully getting more followers on Instagram takes a few proven tactics. One obvious way is to take and share amazing pictures. Another one is to use popular and relevant hashtags. TagsforLikes.com actually makes finding, copying, and pasting the most popular Instagram hashtags, by keyword or topic, simple. Another way to get more followers on Instagram is to like several pictures in a row of the same account and then follow that account. This makes it impossible for them to miss your “chunk” of engagement when they check their notification stream among all their other one-off alerts. I've also found images with quotes over them do exceptionally well on IG and can help increase your follower count and engagement level. Try using a simple free tool, like Pablo from Buffer, or a mobile app, like Over or Retype, to build professional-looking versions of these in seconds. (Location 1986)

If you combine Instagram's addicted, daily users to Facebook's amazing data, you have a match made in Conversion Code heaven. (Location 1999)

In my early tests of Instagram ads the cost per click, volume of clicks, conversion rate, time on site, and page views per visitor were all rock solid. (Location 2002)

Today, you can hop over to Medium or LinkedIn and publish a post that can be seen by their readers, not yours. The first time I published a post on Medium, it got over 17,000 views—99 percent of which came from their community, not mine. Of course, inside of the post I had several links back to my stuff, which got me some solid referring traffic. Here's the catch: I studied the Medium ecosystem and thought critically about what I should publish there. I knew my typical “how-to” articles would not go viral. So I wrote a very heartfelt piece about my wife and kids being away for the summer and how much harder that was than not having my phone for a day or two. The Medium community loved it and recommended it, and Medium featured it on their home page and a few other key places on the platform. (Location 2011)

You should also identify any blogs or websites that are influential in your industry and send them some original content to publish. (Location 2017)

I find that when you send in a piece to just about any outlet or blogger and add “my last article got 17,000+ views and hundreds of social shares” or “I can also email it out to my 15,000+ email list,” they don't ask too many questions. (Location 2019)

Having quality audio content, with well-placed lead magnets and offers, for these lengthy “downtimes” is quickly becoming a must. Podcasts don't bring back physiology like videos do, but not everyone is good on video and they do at least get you back tone. In many ways, podcasts are the new blogs. (Location 2029)

Pro tip: Add bumpers to the beginning and the end of your podcast with clear calls to action, like “Text this code to this number to get this freebie” or “Go to our website dot com slash podcast to download the show notes and a list of all the resources mentioned on the air.” You don't just want to get thousands of listens. You also want to get hundreds of leads. Even if you (Location 2045)

Webinars I am sure you have attended a webinar in the last few years. But have you actually used webinars as a lead generation and conversion tool for yourself yet? If not, you are REALLY missing out. Webinars open up two entirely new types of “sales pitches” for you: the group pitch and the 90 percent pitch-free pitch. Use them both to go beyond the “one-on-one” sales call option. This opens up a huge new lead type: There are a large percentage of people who just do not want to put themselves in a position to be one-on-one with a salesperson. Period. There are also a large percentage of folks who just won't hear out a sales pitch of any type. (Location 2055)

And by having the “pitch-free pitch” (meaning you spend the first 90 percent of the webinar teaching and not selling, then quickly pitching, and closing with a solid one-time offer during the last 10 percent), you can attract exponentially more people when you market education versus marketing a sales pitch. In fact, let's say you get five times more attendance when marketing a webinar where you bring value than you do one where you pitch. (Location 2062)

Even though what we sell at Curaytor costs more than $1,000 per month, I consistently close 10 percent or more of our group webinar attendees. I make the offer and show a number to call (I use BetterVoice.com to track the number of calls and to route the leads and any missed calls to our CRM). They call in to get the one-time offer. My sales team uses the script in Section Three of this book to close them at the highest rate possible. Plus, the added bonus is that you grow your email list much more quickly when A/B tested against sales pitch-only marketing. (Location 2071)

Once the webinar ends put the recording on YouTube and then embed it into a new post on your blog. Don't forget that Webinar recordings also make for great email marketing, Facebook ad, and landing page content. (Location 2078)

Pro tip: If you do start producing webinars, you want to get a minimum of 50 percent who register to also attend. Some call this “show rate.” Make sure you send out supplemental reminder emails. Don't just rely on the webinar tool you use to follow up. Also, not everyone will call in or email in, but I have found a small hack that gets me even more “I am ready to buy” chances from my webinars—when you make your offer at the end, tell anyone who wants to buy to put their cell phone number in the chat box and you will call them ASAP. It is a beautiful thing to see those numbers come flying into the GoToWebinar chat box. The second you close out the webinar, run an attendee report and start dialing. All the numbers they put in the chat box will be in a CSV file! (Location 2080)

Who do you know who has a huge email list or social media presence that does not overlap with yours all that much, but consists of people who might buy from you? If you provide enough value and have strong relationships in place, “using” someone else's audience to grow yours can have a big impact. (Location 2090)

The Fortune is in the Follow-Up Now that you have leads regularly coming in, the real work starts: Ensuring you create quality sales appointments on a consistent on-demand basis. (Location 2161)

In the next section, I introduce a 20/20/20 sale. If you have what is sometimes called an ISA (inside sales associate) on your team, they will basically be doing the equivalent of the first 20: gaining control, digging deep, qualifying, and uncovering objections, before transferring to a closer. Another way to use an ISA is to leverage them to call your old leads so that your higher-commissioned salespeople don't have to get told no as often. When a salesperson can focus on selling while a scheduler focuses on appointments, you create a much better quality of life for everyone. (Location 2169)

check out Aaron Ross's great book Predictable Revenue, where he shares how he grew the inside sales team at Salesforce.com to a $100 million a year channel using this same methodology. (Location 2185)

Leads are meaningless if someone does not work them and follow up with them in a systemized, strategic, and repeatable way. It amazes me that people are willing to spend a small fortune on leads, but then don't hedge their bets and spend nearly as much time, money, and resources on converting them. (Location 2190)

Appointments get us one step closer to our real goal, closing sales (Section Three). Speed + Tenacity + Script = Highest Conversion Rate Possible Because Internet lead generation and conversion are so new, the best advice about lead conversion is typically built around speed to respond (Location 2194)

Just remember this quote (and never forget it) from Gaspar Noe's Irreversible when you think about lead follow-up: “Time destroys all things.” Your ability to convert an Internet lead will be directly impacted by your ability to contact them fast. In fact, you have a 100x better chance of turning a lead into a conversion in the first five minutes than you do after just 30 minutes. Plus, you can increase the percentage of leads you contact from 48 percent to 93 percent by calling six times, not once. Don't call once the first day and again on day two. Call on minute 1, minute 10, minute 30, hour three, and day two, as an example. (Location 2211)

It's also helpful to know that calling leads during certain hours and on certain days works best (see Figure 6.5). The ideal time to call leads in order to convert them is between 8 and 10 a.m. and 4 and 6 p.m. Calling on Wednesday and Thursday gives you the best chance at reaching someone. This makes perfect sense. You can get someone on the phone BEFORE their day gets going or as it is winding down. You also have a much better chance of contacting someone during the middle of the week than you do on a Monday or a Friday. (Location 2219)

Beyond calling quickly and often, which you should set up reminders for in the form of an action plan applied to all new leads in any CRM, you must also use automated emails and text messages to complement your quick calls in order to achieve the highest conversion rate possible. (Location 2231)

When I get a new lead through one of our landing pages that collects a phone number, I use an auto SMS with merge codes that says, “Hi [lead first name]. I got your information from [lead source name]. Can you talk now?” We often get more replies to that text than we do opens of our first drip email. Why? Speed matters, so does personalization, plus our inboxes are clogged when compared to our SMS messages. We use a CRM called Follow Up Boss that sends the text message for us (and also sends our drip emails), but there are other tools out there, like Twilio, BetterVoice, or SendHub, that have some neat auto SMS (as well as mass SMS) features. (Location 2235)

“Hey [first name]. It's Chris from Curaytor. Can you chat?” is about all it takes to get a flood of responses when you do this, as long as you focus it on hot leads who have been opening and clicking emails or visiting your website most recently. Using auto and bulk SMS messages to convert new and hot leads is one of the biggest untapped opportunities in lead conversion today. Emails That Work The fact that you call and text doesn't mean that you shouldn't also send automated email messages… (Location 2243)

Instead, craft initial drip emails that are more human, ask for a reply, and sound less canned, like, “I just got your information from Zillow. Is now a good time for you to speak?” or “I appreciate you filling out that form on our website. I know it can sometimes be scary to do that. Is now a good time for you to speak?” Don't think of your new lead drip emails as converters—think of them as conversation starters. They'll ultimately lead to conversions more quickly anyways because conversations are what create closes. Not drip emails. Beyond the first message, come up with several more that you sequence and space out strategically. When I get a new lead, I send them an automated email on days one and two, and then again on days four and seven. That is… (Location 2252)

In fact, because email open rates drop off so dramatically over time, you will learn in the next chapter that I actually do not send any drips or automated emails to leads after the six-month mark. Everything from that point on is freshly crafted and real-time. Another solid message to add throughout your new lead campaigns (or to send to all of your old leads all at once) is the “just checking in” email. This one crushes it for us: Subject line: Checking in Body: I was just checking in to see if you needed anything from me today. That's it. I'm not kidding. I have spent hours and hours on longer, more well-written emails that tried to impress leads. They never do better than this bite-sized, conversation-starting approach. Pro tip: If you do have names or other data for your leads, make sure you use merge codes. You can even put merge codes in subject lines and SMS messages so that even though they are automated, they feel personal. As an example, if a real estate agent got a home value request that included an address, they could merge that field into their… (Location 2262)

So focus on speed, tenacity, and using multiple channels of follow-up (plus the script you will learn in Section Three when they do answer the phone) to ensure that you are converting the highest percentage of Internet leads you possibly can. (Location 2280)

Need More Appointments? How to Use Email Marketing, Retargeting, and User Tracking to Turn Old Leads into Quality Appointments Everyone thinks the cure to their online ailment is more leads. That if somehow you just continue to add leads to the top of your funnel, the middle (appointments) and bottom (sales) will work themselves out somehow. Good luck with that. You need as much purpose and strategy, if not more so, to turn an Internet lead into an appointment as you do capturing them in the first place. Here's the good news. Old leads buy things, too. I promise. In fact, I can take just about any email list (like the one you probably already have or the one you now know how to grow quickly after reading Section One) and get a few appointments and sales immediately. (Location 2285)

Don't trip over nickels (leads you already have) just to pick up pennies (more new leads). If you already have old Internet leads (including at least their email address) who never responded to your past attempts (or lack thereof), you can create appointments en masse with smart mass emails. In fact, I'm about to share an email that you can send today to all of your old leads at once that will almost certainly (and instantly) resurrect some for you and turn them into quality appointments. (Location 2294)

You have to promise you will not use any type of HTML email template when you send this email. The design should just be a plain old email like you would send to a friend or colleague, using Gmail or your phone. I don't mind if you use some type of email signature that looks nice. You just cannot use a highly stylized template for this email, period. (Location 2299)

So with that being said, here is the email that you can send today to all your old Internet leads in an effort to create some appointments. (Location 2314)

Subject line: Quick question Body: Are you still looking to buy [INSERT WHAT YOU SELL HERE]? Signed, You (Location 2317)

Another top-performing cold lead email we send in a similar vein simply has the subject line “Checking in” with a body consisting of “I wanted to check in and see if you needed anything from me today.” (Location 2329)

This less-is-more approach, in an effort to convert leads, may have actually been invented in 2009 by a marketer named Dean Jackson, who talked about a “nine-word email.” Dean recommended a subject line that uses the lead's first name, like “Hey, Lisa” or even just their first name as the subject line, like “Bob.” If you send this email one at a time, adding the name is a no-brainer. Sadly, though, I find that even the people who do have a big email list still do not always have names for all of them. If you do have a list with name and email, you can use a merge code for the first name in the subject line to accomplish the “Hey, Lisa” personalization at scale. (Location 2334)

There Is No Longer an Old Lead Bucket Beyond this one-time jolt to your list that you can also repeat semiregularly as old leads pile up, you should treat the content you send through email to your old leads each month like gold, if you want it to become currency. I have a “no drip” policy when it comes to leads that are older than six months, when the initial marketing automation campaigns I covered in Chapter 6 have run their course. Instead of prewriting canned emails months or even years in advance and putting your leads on a long-term email campaign, commit to spending a minimum of a few hours each month researching, writing, and sending “real-time” emails. I even have a simple method you can use for finding ideas for “fresher” emails to send each month. I use Buzzsumo.com to do some research by keyword, source, or topic, which will show me the most socially shared articles online that match my query. (Location 2347)

You don't have to send boring, vanilla messages about what you sell just because you are marketing to leads. By finding topics and tidbits that are relevant and related to what you sell, not just transferring your sales pitch into an email campaign, you can craft follow-up emails people actually read and look forward to. Your open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, and reply rate will all thank you! Each time I research, compose, and send my mass emails, I make sure they fall into one (or more) of these three simple buckets: 1. Educational: Will the recipient learn something useful and want to thank me by replying? 2. Entertaining: Will the recipient smile and want to thank me by replying? 3. Conversational: Will the recipient want to continue the conversation I start by replying? (Location 2363)

As I have said before and I will say again, conversations create customers. I often look through the past email campaigns that companies have been sending before they hire me. The most common mistake I see is a lack of question marks at the end of the messages. Although many of the leads you send emails to will not reply no matter what you send, without asking specific questions to close out your messages you aren't even giving yourself or them a fair chance. You don't have to be spammy. Just make it conversational. In the example of the she sheds email, we simply asked to close out the email, “I think I actually want one of these! Do you?” We knew that guys would not be able to resist answering if they wanted a she shed. And we were pretty sure the ladies on the lists would more or less reply, “Hell, yes, I want one!” Our instincts were right on both counts. But without the question mark, the volume of replies would have been a fraction of what it was, regardless of the email's quality. This is the same ideology we applied to our new lead follow-up emails as well. Clever. Question. (Location 2371)

Another great way to find content for your emails is your blog. If you are regularly creating content, mass emailing the best of it to your list with links back to your posts (or videos/podcasts) can allow you to increase the frequency at which you send. I am often asked how often is too often to send emails. The answer really lies in quality. If you publish an amazing, insightful new post, you should want as many people as possible to read it. If an article is average, be willing to be self-aware about that and not email it out. Just like you wouldn't write an email about everything you found in BuzzSumo, only the best and most shared. Treat your own content the same way. Just never forget that your email list can be some of your first, and most frequent, readers. Pro tip: While you do not want to schedule emails months in advance, you should set reminders for yourself in your calendar right now so that you do not forget your “email marketing” or “lead follow-up call” days. We all start with the best intentions. You are probably going to want to execute a couple of these ideas… (Location 2379)

Another way to use a lead's behavior to identify whether it is worth calling them is to install user tracking software on your site and/or landing pages. Tools like Woopra, Mixpanel, and Intercom can help you identify who from your database is visiting your website, exactly which pages they looked at, and how long they stayed. Plus, you and the lead can both get real-time alerts based on a formula you predefine. (Location 2414)

As an example, you could set up a trigger in Mixpanel that if someone on your website visits your Testimonials page, it emails them a few more, immediately. (Location 2423)

The possibilities truly are endless. Just grab a pen and paper. Think critically about this and write out the triggers and the messages you want happening. Then get that loaded into a user tracking software so it can work over and over again as leads stumble into your “traps.” (Location 2425)

With user tracking that triggers messages to be sent, your website becomes like its own little choose-your-own-adventure game for each lead. If someone is using the crap out of my site, there is a good chance that they would want more emails from me, too. Or better yet a call! The opposite is true as well. If someone has not used my site in months, it might be time to trigger a “nine-word email.” (Location 2432)

I cannot believe how many companies think that once they have a lead their ad campaigns “worked.” The fact that a lead is in your CRM doesn't mean that you should stop showing them ads. In fact, because you know you have already captured their email and they are in your database, you can get pretty creative with the ads you use. (Location 2439)

Need to Know Exactly What to Say to a Lead on the Phone? How to Have a Perfect First Minute on a Sales Call with an Internet Lead Every sale is won or lost before it's ever pitched. (Location 2460)

There are two very specific things (gaining control and ARPing) that you must do at the beginning of every call if you want to close the sale at the end. (Location 2466)

I personally use the following techniques to stalk all my leads, pre-pitch is when I hyperpersonalize my sales pitches, I close more deals and make more money. Period. (Location 2476)

Ahead you will learn exactly how I quickly use social media (mostly Facebook), mobile apps, and Google searches to win the sale, before it even starts. (Location 2480)

Even though it's common knowledge that you'll get fewer leads when you request more info on your forms, each of the companies I've been a part of collected more than just name, phone, and email. It's not an accident, and this many successful companies probably aren't wrong. Why get that extra info when we know it will hurt our lead conversion rate? Because when our sales teams call, they have some SOLID talking points without doing any manual stalking whatsoever. (Location 2498)

The entire purpose of your landing pages and the “stalk” I outline ahead is to gather two to four very specific data points (or items of interest) about the lead to use during your conversation. Our goal is to have a strong, custom opening to our script, like: “Hey, Susie, my name is Chris Smith and I work for Quicken Loans. I was calling to follow up about your property at 123 Main St. Looks like you currently have a 6 percent interest rate and a loan amount of plus or minus $400,000.” OR “Hey, Susie, my name is Chris and I work for Curaytor. I was calling to follow up about our availability in 90210. I see here that you sold 150 homes last year at an average sales price of $500,000. That is awesome—congrats!” OR “Hey, Susie, my name is Chris and I work for Fashion Rock. I see here that you are looking to become a model and are in Charlotte, North Carolina.” OR “Hey, Susie, my name is Chris and I work for RE/MAX. I was calling about the home you found using Zillow over on Madison St. that is for sale and currently asking $525,000.” “Hey, ________, my name is _____________ and I'm with _____________. I was calling about __________ and I noticed __________, _____________, and ___________ before I called you.” (Location 2505)

When you are trying to call an Internet lead within one second of them opting in and you want to sound competent, you need a… (Location 2523)

When you do have more time to prepare for a pitch, you can do a much more advanced variation of what I just explained. Here is exactly what I do before every sales pitch that is at a set time and date: Step 1 of the Two-Step Lead Stalk. I always start with a Google search. However, I do not just search for the lead's name (unless it is very unique). In my case, there are 3,730,000 exact matches for “Chris Smith” when you Google it. None of the guys pictured in Figure 8.1 are me, although I did always hope to play in the NBA one day. Figure 8.1 Instead, you are going to Google search the lead's email address. By searching Chris@Curaytor.com, instead of “Chris Smith,” the results are reduced to 13,900 total (and now they are all about me in some capacity). You can see Google found my company website (with phone number), plus my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles (see Figure 8.2); both have a plethora of information about my career, interests, and family life. Figure 8.2 Think of a lead's email address as their online thumbprint or Social Security number. There may be millions of people with my name, but there are zero people with my exact email address. You should also use email addresses when searching for people on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We all registered for those sites using our email address, so when you search by email it finds one result, not tens of thousands. You should also do a quick Facebook search using their email address and/or phone… (Location 2524)

Professional Sales Stalking Tools There are also some pro tools you can use to stalk your leads prepitch when a Google search is not enough or does not return the insights you need. Spokeo, Intelius, Wink, Zabasearch, and PeekYou all also provide “big data” that is super useful for salespeople. Many CRMs also enrich the lead's profile automatically with “big data.” My favorite tool for stalking leads these days is an app called Charlie. Once you… (Location 2550)

Step 2 of the Two-Step Lead Stalk. Based on what you found in step 1, jot down two to four talking points or insights that prove you did your homework (leads always appreciate this). So in my case, you could have started your call by saying: “Hey, Chris, it's Mr. Sales Guy from Company X. I saw a tweet you sent out yesterday about your Facebook groups and how Zillow actually made a change based on their influence. Impressive stuff! I actually spent a few minutes in the group you created, and it looks like you have built a special community. Congrats! The reason I called is that I saw you were interested at one point in what we sell and I wanted to talk more about it with you.” (Location 2561)

The first widget of “the script” should include the following. Your Four Custom Bullets ________________ 2. __________________ 3. _________________ 4. _________________ “Hey, _________, my name is ____________ and I work for ________________. I was calling to follow up about 1. ______________. Looks like you said 2.___________, 3.___________, and 4.__________. How are you today?” These “bullets” will disarm the lead, let them know you are a professional, and make it crystal clear that they gave you their information. This is “unguessable” stuff and immediately separates you from the other cold callers. (Location 2575)

By inserting hyperpersonalized data points into our script at the very beginning, before we let them speak and before we ask our first “how are you?” or “is now a good time?” or “did I catch you at a bad time?” question, the person on the other end is much more inclined to hear you out. (Location 2587)

After you have nailed your opening, next you need to gain psychological control over the caller. We need to begin the conditioning process (albeit subconsciously) so that at the end of the call, when we say, “Jump” (Buy!), they will say, “How high?” (Yes!) How to Gain Control over the Call(er) with One Simple Sentence (Location 2591)

What you say next is critical, and it needs to be the same every single time. Once you find a “gain control” statement that works for you, trust me, you should just use the same one every time. Here is exactly what I say next: “I need you to please grab a pen and paper so that I can give you some information that isn't available online. Let me know when you are ready.” OR “Can you please grab a pen and paper—I want to give you my personal contact information in case we get disconnected?” OR “I have some information that you are going to want to jot down. Can you please grab a pen and paper and let me know when you are ready?” Then once they are ready I say, “Great. My cell phone number is 555-5555 and my email address is Chris@Curaytor.com.” Notice the common element? By giving them an order to do something physical, and them doing it, it makes me/you the alpha. (Location 2598)

After they write down the information you give them, the next sentence is pretty simple: “Tell me the primary reason why you inquired about _________.” (Location 2618)

Our job in sales is to knock the brick wall down so that they will have a normal, human conversation with us. What I have learned is that no matter what you sell, during the first minute of a call with an Internet lead they will say something like the following: At Quicken they would always say, “I just want to know what the interest rates are.” At Fashion Rock they would always say, “I just want to learn more about how it works.” At Curaytor they always say, “I just want to know how much it costs and if it is available in my area.” What they are all really saying is, “I don't want to be sold—I just wanted to learn more before I might buy.” The nice thing is that it is usually very easy to identify the “brick wall statements” that your leads will make day in and day out. Once you know them, the last step in a perfect first minute of a sales call is to use a technique called ARPing. ARP stands for Acknowledge, Respond, Pivot. (Location 2621)

Here is how you would acknowledge in each of these cases: “I just want to know what the rates are.” Acknowledge: “You just want to know what the rates are. No problem!” (Location 2633)

The acknowledgment lets them know with 100 percent certainty that you heard them. Remember, physiology is the number one way that humans communicate, and we don't have that luxury over the phone. Where normally as someone would ask you a question you would look at them and nod along so they knew you were listening and understood, on the phone the acknowledgment is the equivalent of the head nod. It also buys you a moment to think about what you will say next—the “Response.” Thankfully, your responses will almost always be the same because you will identify responses that are comfortable for you to say and that work. Here is how you would respond in each of the foregoing cases: “I just want to know what the rates are.” Acknowledge: “You just want to know what the rates are. No problem!” Respond: “The rates are currently at historic lows, and most of the people I speak with are saving a ton of money.” (Location 2641)

If your responses were “The rate is 6 percent,” or “We charge $1,275/month,” you will find that it will be a very quick call. The last step is to pivot the conversation to where you want it: “I just want to know what the rates were.” Acknowledge: “You just want to know what the rates were. No problem!” Respond: “The rates are currently at historic lows, and most of the people I speak with are saving a ton of money.” Pivot: “How long have you owned your home?” (Location 2662)

The pivot gets the conversation back to where we want it. It also leads us into the next part of the code: how to build rapport with an Internet lead by asking the right questions. The pivot question is the first in a series of questions that we will ask the lead in an effort to “dig deep,” build serious rapport, and close them more easily. (Location 2678)

Questions to Ask That Make It Impossible for an Internet Lead to Say No (Location 2686)

The inside sales mecca is quality leads + instant speed to response + increasing talk time by using a proven framework for your conversation on the phone. (Location 2692)

The following statement is all that you need to say to proactively uncover objections (if there are going to be any): “If we are able to accomplish your goals and you agree everything makes sense, is there any reason that you wouldn't be able to move forward today?” (Location 2835)

As I looked through the report I was nauseated by the focus on reach, engagement, new Likes, and popular posts. I would love to see you try to take those things down to the bank and deposit them. When I finally found the part of the report that addressed the number of leads generated and cost per lead. Their lead volume and conversion rate were terribly low, and their cost per lead was at least 10 times higher than it should have been. To put that into a perspective that gets me excited about optimizing my marketing campaigns and looking at the metrics that matter, they could have gone from 150 leads a month to 1,500 leads a month, with the exact same ad spend, had they used The Conversion Code. What they were doing was passive. What I taught you is purposeful. (Location 3334)

Website Metrics That Matter (Location 3349)

Conversion rate: It is important to have a baseline for how your site converts traffic. By knowing this, you can feel much better about sending paid traffic there and spending more time on SEO. (Location 3357)

New versus returning visitors: (Location 3364)

Top-performing pages: I am constantly looking at what our top-performing pages and blog posts are. This is the easiest way to identify new content we should create. (Location 3382)

One thing you can do right now that will pay itself back again and again is to go into your Google Analytics and look for your top 10 pieces of content or pages of all time. (Location 3384)

Paid search results: One thing that every company should do is at least run an SEM/PPC campaign in Google for your own brand or name when it is searched. When you buy an ad for what someone was literally searching for, it gets clicked a lot. With an ad in Google versus just relying on the organic result, we get much more control over what is displayed and the calls to action. (Location 3407)

Landing Page Metrics That Matter (Location 3412)

Total number of leads and the cost per lead: (Location 3417)

Conversion rate: (Location 3420)

Sales Metrics That Matter Total number of sales. That's it. (Location 3501)

Sure, number of leads called, number of leads received, number of appointments scheduled, show rate, close rate, total talk time logged, and hours worked can all be good metrics to watch and will certainly have a direct correlation with results. (Location 3504)